Baltimore neighborhoods

This episode begins with a recovering addict who’s found peace, purpose, and a modest income folding paper flowers and peddling them to passersby on the street corner. The episode ends with a Salvadorian immigrant who spends 50 hours a week on an assembly line in a chicken processing plant. In between are more stories of entrepreneurs and day-laborers, people trying to make a living and trying to live life along the way.

In this episode, a group home is a haven for residents with mental and psychological challenges; a web-design CEO reveals his second life as an experimental musician; a pizzeria owner shares a lesson in pride and humility; a rock drummer trades in his sticks for a career in corporate voice-overs; a recovering heroin addict struggles to stay clean for her 2-year-old daughter; and the boss of a branding agency second-guesses his own brand of leadership.

A boom in new, young residents is great for business, unless you’re the neighborhood funeral home. In this episode, a funeral director looks toward an uncertain future, a yarn shop becomes a handicraft social hub, a family of Mennonites arrives to start a Christian school, and a record store owner ponders his decision to become… a record store owner.

“I think the word we’re dancing around is ‘gentrification.’” So says Benn Ray of Atomic Books at the outset of this episode. What follows is a multidimensional portrait of a neighborhood in flux. The 3600 block of Falls Road is a mix of longtime rowhome residents, recovering opiate addicts, and a new wave of business owners whose trendy boutiques have come to redefine a neighborhood that’s been in long economic decline. Who does Hampden belong to? The answer depends who you ask.

In this episode, portraits of irrepressible drive and determination: A self-made cosmetics mogul opens up a school of makeup artistry, a local fashion entrepreneur delivers a searing sociopolitical critique, a hair stylist runs a one-man business and wears his heart on his sleeve, and a sanitation worker trades in his drug-dealing past for a career cleaning the streets.

The locals call it Black Wall Street, and it’s earned the nickname. 17 black-owned businesses operate on the 2400 block of Saint Paul Street, which sits on a bustling intersection at the geographic center of Baltimore city. In this episode, we meet the crew at Reflection Eternal Barbershop, where an aspiring music producer creates hip hop tracks in between haircuts. We visit Deleen’s Boutique, where the namesake proprietor works wonders on a Juki sewing machine. We drop in at Flourish, a shop that specializes in crystals, essential oils, and Tibetan Singing Bowls. And we check out what’s cooking in the kitchen of Terra Café.

It’s hard to write a 'spoiler-free' description of this episode because these stories from 1100 Ward Street take so many surprise twists. Let's just say we meet a man who almost got to play with The Orioles, a guy who ended up becoming friends with a woman who stabbed him, a woman who survived a house fire, a man who got the closest thing he ever had to a father figure when he was behind bars, and a repo man who struggles to make his own car payments.

This episode is an unlikely triptych of redemption stories from the 1100 block of Ward Street. We meet Paul’s Place Peer Recovery Coach Dolly Miller, who’s been clean for nine years now after spending more than half her life addicted to drugs. We visit with Paul’s Place Ambassador Volunteer Coordinator Will Thomas, who overcame addiction and homelessness and uses his experience to guide others with similar struggles. And we get to know Paul’s Place volunteer Paul Schurick, whose life changed profoundly when he was sentenced to community service after being disgraced in a political scandal.

Back in the 1800’s, they literally herded pigs through the streets of Southwest Baltimore’s Washington Village, from the terminus of the B & O Railroad to the neighborhood’s meat packing plants and butcher shops. The nickname, ‘Pigtown,’ has stuck, but the industry is long gone from this part of the city. These days, the neighborhood is known for unemployment, homelessness, and drug addiction.

7200 Harford Road is about as far north and east as you can get and still be in Baltimore City. It’s tucked just inside the county line, and downtown feels far-off when you’re out here. On this block, MMA fighters train at American Muy Thai, customers get perms at Umberto’s Hair Salon, folks line up for Italian and German specialties at the counters of Mastellone’s Deli and Mueller’s Delicatessen, and the 112-year-old Fenwick Bakery sells homemade marshmallow donuts. Field producer Adam Droneburg is our guide as we visit these spots and more on the 7200 block of Harford Road.

This place, people counted it out to drown. But Cherry Hill is literally that. We are a hill. I don’t care how much water you surround us by. We are a hill that will always stand and will always be bold.

The corner diner, Soul Source, is the hub of the 2100 block of Edmondson Avenue. The manager, Joyce, has been serving breakfast to the locals for 30 years. Her restaurant looks out onto a West Baltimore block scarred by gunshots and stabbings. But the block is more than its scars. It’s a block where a Pentecostal pastor keeps her faith in the face of suffering, where a reformed drug dealer works as a kitchen appliance repairman, and where a political reporter from Kashmir has found sanctuary working behind the counter at a sandwich shop. It’s a block where a former Nigerian soccer star operates an auto repair shop. In his car lot, he lets a homeless man sleep in a van. Next door is an army veteran who issued air-strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan. And across the street is a tire repairman who’s trying to beat a 30-year heroin addiction. Crystal, who works in the kitchen at Soul Source, sums it up like this: It’s not always peaches and cream, but this is a place that you know is always going to be real.

The 2016 season finale episode of Out of the Blocks takes a twist, as we travel to the 600 block of Deepdene Road in North Baltimore’s Tuxedo Park neighborhood. The sounds of city traffic give way to the natural harmony of cicadas, birds, and frogs on this tree-lined residential block, nestled up against the city’s Stony Run Trail. The stories here are a study of families in all their varieties: families with same-sex parents, interracial parents, single parents, and adoptive parents, as well as empty-nesters, divorcees, and newlyweds. The twist? For the Out of the Blocks producers, this episode is personal. Wendel Patrick used to live here, and Aaron Henkin lives here now.

The 2100 block of Monument Street is anchored by the Baltimore’s Northeast Market, a honeycomb of vendors selling fish, meat, fried chicken, barbeque, bulgogi, deli sandwiches, and baked goods. The commerce spills onto the surrounding sidewalks, where open-air peddlers hawk sunglasses and socks, CDs & DVDs, umbrellas and pepper spray. Unemployed entrepreneurs polish headlights, sell loose cigarettes, and do whatever else they can to make ends meet. It all happens in the shadow of the looming Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, an institution at pains to restore relations with the neighborhood in the wake of longstanding ill will.

The 200 block of West Saratoga Street is nestled in the frenetic bustle of downtown Baltimore. Church bells ring in a duet with the clanging Light Rail, city buses rattle and hiss, and loud sidewalk conversations compete with the din. These are the sounds that reverberate through a block peppered with Bengali body oil shops, barbershops and salons, a magic candle store, and the shoe-repair shop of a Russian cobbler. A vanguard of artists populates a five-story building on the block, a honeycomb of musicians, painters, fashion designers, and jewelers. As a sum of its parts, 200 West Saratoga is an ecstatic cacophony of optimism, ambition, anxiety, and resilience.

The 6300 block of Reisterstown Road is tucked just inside the Northwest Baltimore city limit. Orthodox Jews from Russia and Iran operate kosher eateries, and Nepali Hindus run carry-outs and gas stations. Add to the mix a public library branch, a used-car dealership, and a home-security expert who specializes in cracking safes, and you get an idiosyncratic cast of characters who all manage to share a stage in the theater of city life.

4700 Eastern Avenue is in Southeast Baltimore's Highlandtown neighborhood. Over the past fifty years, the story of the American Dream has been written and rewritten in this community, as two distinct waves of immigrants have taken their turns settling in and opening up shop. In the 1960's & 70's, Greek immigrants arrived in droves, and the neighborhood came to be known as Greektown. More recently, Latino immigrants have followed in those footsteps, establishing a strong local presence of their own. Today, this block is a cultural checkerboard, as the names of the restaurants attest: Acropolis, El Merengue, Zorbas, Papuseria Mama Tana, and Greektown Grill. The voices on this block have foreign accents, but their stories are quintessentially American.